London has been battered by 50mph winds that have felled trees and caused travel chaos. Powerful gusts swept across the capital as the Met Office issued a yellow "be aware" weather alert for most of the country.

For a situation generally agreed to be a crisis, there are few convincing solutions around for London's housing problem. London Councils says the last census suggests we need to build 40,000 houses a year in the capital. At present we’re managing barely half that.

Meanwhile, many of the affordable homes the Mayor took credit for in his first term were started under his predecessor. In 2011, he promised another 55,000 by 2015. Just 3,332 affordable homes were completed in
the first nine months of this financial year (and only 1,357 started): Boris
now needs to finish the remaining 35,000-odd in just two years.

The Chancellor’s contribution today is to increase the maximum discount for council tenants buying their own homes. But that won’t help most first-time buyers, and will only add to renters’ problems by further reducing the supply of social housing.

Indeed, while we often view the housing crisis in terms of homebuying, prices have risen so far that for many people they are already past the point of no return. Census figures late last year showed that for the first time in 30 years, more Londoners now rent than are owner-occupiers. Average London home prices have topped £373,000; last year the average deposit for first-time buyers was £60,000.

Even the Mayor’s affordable homes aren’t affordable for many: he has had to raise the household income limit for the First Steps scheme to £64,300 a year (for a one or two-bedroom home).

Moves like the Government’s Funding for Lending scheme have helped around the edges by encouraging banks to lend. And while the Mayor’s call for a cut in stamp duty for first-time buyers was quixotic, schemes offering shared ownership, like First Steps, are welcome.

But until we take a new approach to building homes for rent, the majority are going to suffer. A National Housing Federation report found that private rents soared by almost twice as much as earnings in 2011 and will rise by almost a third over the next five years.

For a start, we need developers prepared to build and rent flats for the long term, taking a revenue stream over time rather than flogging the lot off immediately — just as they do for commercial property, and as residential landlords do in Germany and the US.

And we need a new wave of social housebuilding. We could use public sector brownfield land — and let councils borrow against their existing assets.

What’s more, if ministers insist on selling off council homes at knock-down prices, writing off millions of pounds-worth of public assets, they should pledge to build at least one new home for every one they sell. It may have worked for Mrs Thatcher — but in 2013, we just need more homes.

Way to go, West Country Girl

My fellow East Devonian Joss Stone may yet toast the region’s bafflingly complex route finding. Two men now on trial for allegedly plotting to murder the singer failed, the prosecution has claimed, after getting hopelessly lost in the lanes around Cullompton (the trial continues).

East Devon is a place where if you don’t develop a superior sense of direction, you may not be able to find your way home from the pub: by the age of 18, most locals can navigate for miles on dark, unsignposted lanes. I still can. Then again, I always get lost when I venture into Notting Hill; presumably even local pre-schoolers can find their way to the Electric Diner or The Shed without difficulty.

Blair is still in blinkers over the Iraq war

I never expected Tony Blair to express the slightest regret for the invasion of Iraq, which began 10 years ago today. Still, his claim yesterday that Iraq would have been “a lot worse than Syria” if we hadn’t gone in — on the grounds that there would “probably” have been a bloody uprising against Saddam Hussein — is pretty cavalier. As things turned out, the respected Iraq Body Count project says the war and its aftermath killed at least 111,000 civilians, while the UN estimates that 2.2 million refugees have fled since 2003.

What is striking, looking back, is just how far critics of the war were correct: about the rubbish intelligence used to underpin the WMD justification; about the fabrications of the “sexed-up” September 2002 dossier; about the US determination all along to go to war, regardless of the UN; and about the years of chaos and bloodshed that would follow. And we didn’t even foresee al Qaeda muscling in or Iran’s menacing rise. This is why seven out of 10 Britons still say the war was wrong. In response, Blair and his apologists can only do what they did a decade ago — make it up as they go along.

Shut that shop door, pronto

Today’s vernal equinox marks the official start of spring but still the grim winter hangs on. So why do so many shops insist on keeping their doors open? Campaign group Close the Door (closethedoor.org.uk) says four out of five national chains have a policy of leaving their main doors open to the street, even in winter. Stores can save up to half their energy use by closing the doors when the heating is on, plus an average of 10 tonnes of CO2 emissions a year. You wouldn’t leave the doors and windows open at home in this weather. Tell shops not to do the same.